“You understand me?” Ben asked.
He nodded, scared, and likewise clear-headed in a tight-focused, adrenaline-edged way. He stayed very still while Ben started untaping his left wrist from the pipe. He didn’t think either ahead or backward. It was just himself and Ben, and the old man saying, holding tightly to his shoulder, “I apologize. I sincerely apologize about this, son. But we can’t have you wandering around off your head. Ben’s not a bad guy. He really isn’t.”
He remembered what he’d overheard. He had thought Bird wanted to keep him alive, and now he wasn’t sure either one of them was sane.
Ben freed his left arm. Bird untied the right. Moving both at once hurt his chest, hurt his back, hurt everything so much his eyes teared.
Ben went away forward. Bird stayed behind, put a hand on his shoulder. “No difference between our config and yours, the standard rig, by what I saw. Anything you can reach, you can use. Wouldn’t use the spinner with that cable attached, understand, but you got gwhile you were tumbling, God knows probably more than enough. Your stimsuit’s clean, but you’d as glad be free of it a day or so, wouldn’t you? You’re probably sore as hell.—Right? Just don’t try to use the shower, cable won’t let it seal, we’ll have water everywhere. Anything else you got free run of. Copy that?”
“Yeah.”
Bird gathered up the trailing cable, put it in his hand, closed his fist on it. “When you’re moving about the cabin, do kind of keep a grip on that. We don’t want you hurt. Hear? Don’t want that cable to pull you up short. We’re not going to do a burn without we warn you, but all the same, you keep a hand to that. Hold on to it.”
Just too many things had happened to him. He could not figure what his situation was or what they wanted. He shoved off, drifted away from the bulkhead to get the packet of soup that had come adrift. Braking with his arm against a pipe was almost more than he could do. He let go the cable, confused, and banged his head.
Someone caught his foot and pulled, gently. It turned him as he came down and he saw Bird with a packet of soup in his own hands.
“There’s solid food,” Bird said, “when you can handle it. Use anything from the galley you need. You got pretty dehydrated.”
He hated all this past tense, implying a major piece of time he didn’t remember. From moment to moment he told himself Cory was gone, and every time he did that he felt a sense of panic. He brushed a touchpad with his foot, stopped, drank a sip and watched Bird sip from his own packet. He kept thinking, They’re lying to me, they’re not taking me home…
Finally he asked Bird, “What ‘driver is it out there?”
“What about a ‘driver?”
“You were talking about a ‘driver. What ‘driver were you talking about?”
Ben yelled up from below, “Don’t tell him a damn thing, Bird. He hasn’t earned it.”
He looked from Ben down at the workstation up to Bird, resting by the bulkhead.
“Ben’s excitable,” Bird said. “Just have your breakfast. Or supper, as may be.”
But Ben was drifting up to them. Ben braked with the shove of a hand against the conduits. “I’d like to know,” Ben said, “what you’ve got to pay for this trip. Eat our food, breathe our air, take up our time and our fuel. We’re aborting a run for you. We just got effin’ startedand we’re headed back to Base, damn near zeroedon your account, mister. You got any assets to pay for this? Or just debts?”
“We have money,” he said, and then knew he shouldn’t have said that to these people. He said, desperately catching up the thread of his thought—he hoped he hadn’t lost anything between: “So what ‘driver is it?”
Ben said, “How much money?”
“Ben,” Bird said.
“I want,” he said carefully, “I want you to call that ‘driver and ask about my partner.”
“Ask what about your partner?” Ben asked.
“Ask if they—” He stuttered on the thought. He never stuttered, and still he could not get it out. “—if they p-picked her up.”
“So why should they? What were you doing here, poaching in another Refinery’s zone?”
“We w-weren’t.” Dammit. “ Itwas.”
“What do you mean, ‘it was’?”
“Ben,” Bird said, and then, looking at him: “Forget he asked.”
He didn’t understand. He was so weak he couldn’t track what they were saying from moment to moment, and hostile questions, zero gand unaccustomed food were all one confusion of balance and orientation. There was a constant buzz in his head that rose and fell like the fan-sounds. From moment to moment he knew Cory was alive, and from moment to moment he thought about the time and wanted to check his watch to be sure.
But that was crazy. He began to know it was. The only hope Cory had now was that ‘driver ship. Maybe it had picked her up. Maybe it had.
“He’s not telling the story he started with,” Ben said. “Man’s lying somewhere. A collision with a rock, he said. An explosion took one whole damn tank out. The other one’s got a bash you could park a skimmer in. You want to see the videotape, man? I can show you the tape.”
“Didn’t hit a rock,” he said, shaking his head. He had no idea where this was going. He had no idea what they were accusing him of, whether this was going on record or what they wanted from him.
“Why would it explode?”
“The ‘driver clipped us.”
“Facing awayfrom the Well? Whose Zone were you in?”
“Rl.”
“ ‘Driver, hell. You ran it into a rock, didn’t you? Just plain ran it onto a rock.”
“No.”
“Ben,” Bird said, “take it easy. The guy’s confused.”
“ ‘Take it easy.’—Some people with trouble deserve it, you know.”
“We don’t know anything,” Bird said. “His memory isn’t going to be all that good, with what he’s been through.”
“Looks healthy enough. Looks damned well healthy enough on our air and our food. Looks like he’s making real good progress.”
Ben talked about claiming the ship, he recollected that—they were after the ship and they claimed they were taking him to R2, not home; now they were talking about other debts—
They talked as if they wanted to put him to work for them. He had heard about Nouri. It had happened before in the Belt. Guys with all sorts of kinks went out in ships… and when they were ready to come in to Base, they might not want to take the evidence with them.
God, he thought, and looked off toward nowhere. The only thing in the vicinity was that ‘driver ship. If they had never reported finding Cory—
The instruments… something coming at him over the horizon—
Explosion like a fist hit them. G-force. He reached after the fire controls.
No power. Nothing…
Ben left him. Bird left him. He saw Bird talking with Ben, holding on to Ben’s arm, he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Then Ben shouted, “We own that ship!” and Bird: “Just shut it down, Ben, shut it down, for God’s sake, Ben!”
They started arguing again, yelling at each other about money, about what they were spending on him, and Bird took his part, saying, over and over again, “It’s not your damn decision, Ben!”
He watched, turning so he could see, phasing in and out of clear awareness, the fan-sound going in his ears, the soup he had drunk lying queasy on his stomach. He was afraid at one point Ben was going to hit the old man, and that Ben was going to end up in control of the ship.